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It had been five months. Five long, painful months since it had started. It was Midoriya’s turn to patrol a route, and a person had started screaming. He had run over to help, but then he saw an adult breaking the skull of another open and scooping pink stuff Midoriya didn’t even want to think about into their mouth. Their eyes were blank and dead, and as Midoriya watched, more streamed in from who-knows-where. His comm buzzed, but then went dead. He had no clue what was going on, but he could only watch as more and more seemingly brain-dead people wandered into the park and started ripping non-brain dead people apart. As soon as they were bit, they became… zombies.
The apocalypse had started. And Midoriya was alone.
He had streaked to his apartment first, checking in on his mom. There was blood sprayed across the wall and staggering footprints; a scrap of pink fabric drenched in scarlet. Inko was gone, replaced by a zombified husk or… killed.
Midoriya barely got out of the apartment before retching and losing the meager meal he had eaten before going out.
Next, he made his way to UA. Streets that were once easy to traverse became dangerous landmines, full of danger with every step. The zombies were able to use their Quirks, to an extent, and sadly this meant that there were flying zombies. So not even the rooftops were safe. The only good thing he got was that if you hit them hard enough, they literally fall apart. The bad thing about that: only the older ones were that fragile.
So Midoriya took every step he traveled carefully, peering around corners and dashing between now-desolated streets like his life depended on it.
He assumed it did.
It took him way too long to make it to UA, but when you duck into abandoned buildings and have to hide in dumpsters for hours, maybe days, on end, it left him traveling only about two blocks a day.
It took a week and a half to get to UA from his apartment, and the school was in ruins.
The lovely gate had been ripped down, walls crumbled and ruined. The cherry blossom trees were barely alive, only one seeming truly healthy. The blossoms on all the trees, though, were still bright and colorful. Midoriya had gently picked handfuls and handfuls of flowers from those trees, only stopping when all the spare pouches in his belt were stuffed full of pink, white, and soft rosy petals. He didn’t know why, but those little splashes of color helped him to relax, feel better for a brief moment. Then he entered the school.
Almost immediately, he ran into Midnight. She was a zombie too, and she snarled and leapt at Midoriya as soon as she saw him. Her famous gas leaked out of her mouth and off her skin, filling the hallway with pink haze. Pulling the mask in the metal part of his costume up and over his mouth to block the gas, he fought for his life. He had had to snap her neck to get her down, and the action had made him sick again, but only bile would come out.
Nezu was the same. Zombies had overpowered the defenses before he could bolster them, and his zombified body now patrolled the halls. Midoriya had to take him down too, and his only prayer was that they found rest wherever people went when they died, if they even died.
The most heartbreaking was yet to come.
There had been someone, crumpled to the ground and grunting, and he had run up to help. Then he was on his back, and the soulless blue eyes of Yagi Toshinori were fixed with deadly intent on his own forest eyes.
That was when Akatani came to the front first.
Akatani was his… alter? Yeah, he vaguely remembered that term from health and disorder training. Apparently, the stress of seeing people he knew, had known, turned into mindless killing machines and having to kill two people he had trusted already, after a decade of- abuse, that was the only word for it, from his school peers could cause said disorders. His mind had gone fuzzy, then she had taken over. Her glowing green fist had connected a hit straight to Toshinori's chest, throwing him off her. He had let out a guttural sound, something akin to a sob, and she had seen one glint of humanity in his eyes. There was still a tiny bit of Yagi Toshinori in there, buried by the zombie.
Akatani broke her father figure, her mentor, her true hero that day knowing that she had freed a soul. It didn’t help Midoriya cope with the loss any better.
While Akatani was in control, she stripped her binder off from under her hero costume and shoved it into a pocket on her leg, in a crude early form of the agreement they came to months later. She started the trek out of UA, before stilling and thinking over what she was doing for a second. Finding a pointy stick, she drove it through the center of a cherry blossom and stuck it in a crack in the wall of the main UA building. Hopefully, someone would see it and know that there was someone else still alive. She found an empty apartment complex with pretty decent doors and deadlocks, and hunkered down for the night. Midoriya came back to control, but instead of the breakdown he thought he would have he was just numb. So he slept, and regained strength. A small kitchen knife pinned a cherry blossom to the front door, then he was off.
Thus started the longest five months of Midoriya’s and Akatani’s lives.
About three months in, he had found Eri’s tiny body, covered in blood and horn cracked off. The bacteria (at least, he thought it might be a bacteria) had gone straight over the zombie part for her, killing her before she could probably even become a zombie. Then they found her body…
If he kept vomiting at this rate, he’d become too thin to move.
All he could do was keep moving, so he did. Couldn’t stop, or he’d die.
At this point, he was only surviving because the fiery determination burning in him was greater than the flame burning the world around him. Akatani did her best to keep him mentally stable, always chattering in his head and making funny quips. Him and her had come to an agreement that when she was in control she’d take their binder off. When he was in control, he’d bind. It worked.
She was doing okay, but another part of Midoriya longed to be held by someone, feel hands in his no-longer grimy hair and gentle comforting by one of his friends.
He hadn’t found their zombies yet. That, he thanked the powers that be for. Neither had he found Aizawa-sensei’s.
And then… it happened.
Akatani had taken over, bashing through hordes and hordes of zombies while Izuku dissociated in their system. She had had to knock Kamui Woods down just moments before, and then she saw her.
“M-mom?” The long, green head of hair turned, showing gutted eyes and a gaping jaw. Inko Midoriya groaned, staring emptily at her only so-daugh-no, son-
Izuku! Calm down, I have to stay in control!
“Ack!” A hand had closed around her arm, and she batted the zombie off of her and sent it to the ground with a 5% Full Cowl kick, and she took the chance to look around her. Her pupils contracted in fear when she saw the horde of zombies, drawn by their own kinds’ rancid blood being spilt onto the ground and the scent of fresh meat.
She had tripped up, and was paying the price for it.
Akatani was suppressing the panic she was feeling at this point, keeping One for All crackling along her body. She might go down with this amount of zombies, but goshdarnit she was gonna go down with a fight!
“HEY, MOVE!” The familiar voice had Akatani leaping to the side, but inside the system Izuku had frozen.
Uraraka Ochako, hero name Uravity, Class 1-A student, rocketed past h-he- him , leaping into the fray, slapping and smacking zombies left, right, and center. Then Tsuyu Asui, hero name Froppy, Class 1-A student, flied into the fray, flinging zombies up and away with her long tongue. They snarled in confusion, and Midoriya’s eyes instinctively tracked his mother as she floated up and away.
“NOW, OCHAKO, KERO!” Uraraka tapped herself and pushed backwards, and tapped her fingers together.
“Release!” The zombies started falling to the ground, thudding against the floor. They didn’t get back up again. Uraraka’s heeled boots hit the floor with a graceful thunk, crouching in a perfect landing and keeping her balance.
Midoriya just watched his mother fall through the air, connecting with the floor with a sickening crack. He wanted to move, to make sure she was actually… y’know, but Akatani urged him to stay behind. She was in the center of a horde of zombies, and they were all maybe not dead.
“Hey, kid, are you o… oh…” Midoriya’s attention snapped back to Ochako, who currently looked like she had seen a ghost.
“Midoriya?” Midoriya just stared at her, eyesight blurring slightly. She was- was she real? She was real, right? Not a mirage?
“Midor-Deku, it… it’s actually you?” Tsuyu walked up behind her, eyes narrowing the tiniest bit as she placed a finger on her chin.
“Ochako, kero, wait, look at him-” She cut herself off lunging forward, and Midoriya blinked because wow he was… not touching the floor?
Tsuyu had scooped him into a princess carry, and his face would be burning with indignation if he wasn’t so relieved at the moment. Tsuyu was carrying him, which meant that she wasn’t- she was real-
A soft touch made its way through his grimy hair, and he looked up to see Uraraka looking down at him with tears in her brown, big eyes and fingers threaded through his green locks.
“Oh, Midoriya… what’s happened to you- no matter. Tsuyu, can you carry him back to base? I’ll float his clothing and make it easier.” She tapped on his belt, and a pocket he hadn’t known was left open yielded its contents to gravity, cherry blossoms fluttering to the floor. Uraraka just stared for a moment before slowly tapping on the rest of his outfit, saving the iconic bright red shoes, now scuffed and a dark maroon, for last.
“Got it Ochako, kero. Are you going to keep pace or move ahead?”
“Keep pace, you’re busy with Mido and if any undead come, I can fight them off.” Midoriya’s world went blurry then, consciousness deciding that it could now decide to go all wonky.
The next time he resurfaced, he was being carried into with exhaustion, the bad sleep from a week ago to now dragging his consciousness to darkness. It was all he could do to keep himself in the waking world, because it still wasn’t safe. He might still have to fight. Tsuyu’s pace picked up to a gently rolling sprint, and he briefly wondered just how she kept the bobbing motion as secure as it was. Maybe her frog-like legs? Who knew.
Before he knew it, they were in a shipping container of sorts (?) and Uraraka was rolling a door shut behind her. It was dark, and quiet, and Midoriya couldn’t tell whether anyone was up or not.
“Ooh, no one else is up! Tsu, you know what that means!”
“Go ahead, kero.”
Uraraka’s lips stretched into a dangerous smile, before picking up an odd monstrosity that looked like three megaphones strapped to each other.
“Cover Midoriya’s ears, he isn’t gonna be used to the noise.” Tsuyu pressed her hand to Midoriya’s ear and then pushed the other into her shoulder, and the world was successfully muffled. Uraraka turned the megaphones on, and a high-pitched shrieking noise made him wince at first. Crashing and shouting from somewhere else, then Uraraka screeched into the mic:
“WE FOUND A SURVIVOR! REPEAT! WE FOUND A SURVIVOR!” Another crash, then a very distinct scream of ‘WHAT? ’
“You got them, kero.” Tsuyu moved her hands and switched to holding Midoriya a bit more comfortably, and he blinked blearily around the room. It actually looked pretty cozy, with slightly tattered couches that Midoriya recognized from the UA dorms surrounding a table with cards on it.
“Ochako! Is it true, did you find a… holy cr**, is that Midoriya?” Midoriya slowly shifted his eyes to Kaminari, standing motionless in the doorway of the room. Mina rocketed next to him, also freezing at the sight of Midoriya.
“Dude, that’s Midoriya…”
Suddenly exhausted, Midoriya turned and shoved his face into Tsuyu’s shoulder, before she started moving and set him gently down onto a couch. His eyes fluttered shut, and he let himself relax. He didn’t know how long he floated in darkness, but then-
A hand rested on his arm and Midoriya screeched, snapping back to awareness and flailing backwards until he hit a corner. As he panted, his eyes landed on a gray scarf and yellow goggles in front of him.
Aizawa-sensei was saying something, but Midoriya couldn’t tell what over the roar of blood in his ears. He was alive. They all were alive.
Next thing he knew, he was clinging to Aizawa-sensei like his life depended on it, burying his head in the familiar capture weapon and furiously blinking back tears. Arms wrapped around his back, one digging into his hair and the other pressing against his spine, and Aizawa-sensei spoke.
“It’s alright to cry now, Midoriya. You’re safe.” His voice was gruff, slightly harsh, maybe just a little scratchier than the last time Midoriya had heard his voice. And the dam inside Midoriya finally crumbled to pieces under the pressure, emotions running rampant inside him as Aizawa’s scarf got grey spots of water on it. The whole time, he was wrapped in a tight hug.
Then other hands started pressing against his back, grabbing and squeezing his hands, checking if he was real. Mina’s hand gently squeezed the back of his neck, and Kirishima’s calloused hand rubbed his hand. Shinsou’s long fingers ran through his hair, and Yaoyorozu’s delicate hand massaged the knots out of his shoulder blades. Through it all, Midoriya cried, cried until his emotions finally ran dry and he couldn’t cry anymore. He cried for the five months he had had to suppress tears to survive, he cried for his mother and the hundreds of people infected by the virus, or the bacteria, or whatever it was.
He was safe. And surrounded by friends. And maybe, one day, he would heal.